


kill the calm

by mediest



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21591391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediest/pseuds/mediest
Summary: Sylvain is chained to the post at the opposite end of the small wooden cage. He’s curled up on himself from the pain of being kicked in the stomach, but when he meets Felix’s gaze, he grins and says, “I don’t think that one likes me.”“But you’re so likable,” Felix says stonily.-A guy walks into a prison stockade. Or: alternate ways to say I love you.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 39
Kudos: 1143





	kill the calm

Felix keeps his eyes shut when the cage opens. He already knows who it is, he recognized the voice from yards away, and if Felix looks at him right now, he’s going to kill him.

It takes what sounds like three Dukedom soldiers to toss their new prisoner inside the cage pen. A large weight hits the dirt like a sack of flour. Then comes the clank of more iron, the duller ring of metal against wood. “No talking, no touching,” says one of the soldiers.

“Those sound like Fraldarius party rules.”

A boot connects with ribs. Felix clenches his jaw, doesn’t move. Not yet. 

“He said no talking.” A different soldier, younger and angrier.

The first one again: “Enjoy your new cellmate, Lord Fraldarius.”

The door shuts. 

Felix waits for the footsteps to blend into the indistinguishable noise of the Dukedom army encampment. Then he opens his eyes.

Sylvain is chained to the post at the opposite end of the small wooden cage. His lip is split and bleeding. Either the soldiers stripped him out of his armor or he wasn’t wearing any in the first place. There’s a dark bruise flowering across his left eye and cheek. At least his injuries appear mostly cosmetic. He’s curled up on himself from the pain of being kicked in the stomach, but when he meets Felix’s gaze, he grins and says, “I don’t think that one likes me.”

“But you’re so likable,” Felix says stonily.

Sylvain’s laugh is more of a wheezed groan. His arms flex, testing the shackles. “So, how’ve you been?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Felix says.

“C’mon, nobody’s actually listening.”

Wrong. There are two guards stationed outside the cage pen, both of them capable and vigilant, and the past three days have shown that the one standing on the left also enjoys any excuse to come in and smack Felix around. 

“What are you doing here?” The helpless anger in Felix’s chest comes to a boil. “Why the fuck am I looking at you right now?”

“My bad. Did you already corner the market on getting captured? Is that the exclusive realm of Felix Hugo Fraldarius?”

Felix glares, flushing with shame. They’d received bad information. Faerghus lords were as good as domino pieces: as soon as House Rowe bent the knee to Cornelia, the others fell in line. His father’s web of allies and informants disintegrated overnight. 1,000 men from the south became 3,000 from the west, and one of those men got lucky. His lance chiseled into Felix’s shoulder. Not the worst pain Felix has ever felt. Just enough to slow him down.

It’s infected now. The hot throb of the wound is like a war drum, reverberating outwards, into every muscle of his body. Fatigue erodes the edges of his brain. Give it another day and Felix is going to come down with a hellish fever. Then the Dukedom general will send a healer into the pen. He won’t let Felix die, a dead heir makes a useless bargaining chip, but he’s happy to let Felix lose the arm. 

The soldiers here don’t like Felix either. He’s killed too many of their friends. 

The tone of Sylvain’s voice changes. Flattens out. “What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

“Forget it,” Felix says.

Sylvain doesn’t say anything else. His face says enough. Sylvain only stops fooling around, his eyes only darken in this way, when he’s thinking about one specific thing. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Felix says into the summer evening air. “I’m not dead yet.”

It’s warm, by Faerghus standards. The crickets and katydids are stirring awake. In the distance, Dukedom soldiers enjoy a moment of peace. Outside the cage pen, a guard shifts her weight from one leg to the other.

Inside, Sylvain breaks the second rule and touches his outstretched foot to Felix’s. “No,” he says, “not yet.”

-

The guards dislike Sylvain even more than they dislike Felix. It’s strange to feel any kinship with the traitors who’ve turned their backs on their home country. Yet everyone is united by how much they all want Sylvain to stop talking.

“I wish we saw each other more often,” he’s saying. “Ingrid, too. Without the two of you, there’s no one to spend my time with. I’ve really had to rely on my dating life.”

“Give it a rest,” Felix says. The infection grows worse by the hour. He’s not in the mood for Sylvain’s stories.

But Sylvain looks crestfallen. “Don’t you want to catch up?”

Felix huffs. “Fine,” he says. “It’s boring just sitting here anyway.”

First there was Eloise, Sylvain explains. She was a couple years his senior, but older women had an intriguing kind of life experience, and guess what, she was a redhead too. But she’d left Gautier territory for greener (literally) pastures by the time Sylvain returned from the next campaign. Two days later he met Célia, the daughter of an innkeeper who played hot-and-cold for over a week, but it was worth it. Perfect hair, perfect skin. Come to think of it, she sort of reminded him of Felix.

“Don’t push it,” Felix growls.

Sylvain grins, getting comfortable. He folds his knees up loosely towards his chest. Taps his knuckles, once, against the left. Felix’s gaze flickers down, then up again to the low intensity in Sylvain’s face.

“Then I met this Albinean girl—her name was Nadine—and, Felix, I’m telling you, I fell in love.”

“When’s the wedding?” Felix asks tartly. 

“Nah, it ended after like four days. She found me with another girl,” Sylvain says, charming and false. “Great tits, though.”

“Nadine or the other girl?”

“Are you interested? I can describe them for you.”

Felix pins Sylvain with a disgusted look. Unfortunately Sylvain is well-practiced at ignoring it.

“Nadine. I mean, the other girl was cute too. Ulrica, or something.”

Felix says, “Sorry it didn’t work out.”

“It happens,” Sylvain says, stretching his legs back out. “Wartime and relationships never mix well.”

Felix settles back against his post too. It's been awhile since they last used this cipher. He’s out of practice. Maths was never his best subject.

N, the 14th letter. U, the 21st. Multiplied together, that’s around 300 soldiers. Four days means four hours after sunset. Albinea is northwest. Great tits don’t mean anything except that imprisonment and death itself won’t stop Sylvain from trying to provoke Felix.

Felix taps: right knee, twice. _I hear you._ Sylvain’s expression turns sunny, satisfied. Annoyingly magnetic.

The first time Felix ever thought about kissing Sylvain and almost went through with it was a time like this. Some battlefield that looked like any other battlefield. Sylvain’d taken an arrow to the leg and wouldn’t shut up about it. “I’m fine,” he kept saying, “I’m fine, it’s nothing, let go of me,” as if he could even walk on his own. He’d grown too tall over the years; his weight against Felix’s shoulder was heavier than a sea anchor. Blood matted Felix’s hair. He dragged Sylvain laboriously alongside himself, towards wherever Mercedes was, and it was like walking through a column of water. The whole time, Sylvain going on and on, “What’s the plan here? Are you going to carry me all the way back? Be realistic, Felix,” smiling that stupid reassuring smile. And that’s when Felix thought, if I kiss him. If I kiss him, maybe he’ll shut up. If I kiss him, maybe he’ll give a shit about his own life.

It was a passing thought. In the end, he found Mercedes. Sylvain was fully healed up by the second day, so Felix didn’t feel too bad about backing him against the stone monastery wall and seizing him by the collar. He said, clearly, enunciating each word, “If you ever tell me to leave you behind again, I will never forgive you.” It was a real threat—more than anything else, Felix knew how to carry a grudge. Sylvain smiled again, brushing it off, but when Felix’s grip hardened, he stopped. “Well,” he said softly, “if it means that much to you.”

Somedays Felix wonders at what has truly kept any of them in each other’s lives, beyond tragedy and rotten sentiment. But then, inescapably, there’s the memory of Sylvain, scrawling out pages of numbered letters and coded geography, saying, _This is how I’ll speak to you, without anyone else understanding._

-

Four hours after sunset, commotion erupts in the northwest section of the sleepy encampment. A soldier comes running up to the guards outside the cage pen. They speak urgently, inaudibly; then the guards are reporting elsewhere and the other soldier is their new jailer. 

Sylvain calls out, “Is something going on?”

“Shut up,” the soldier says. His voice slots into Felix’s memory. This is the man who’d kicked Sylvain earlier. 

In the darkness, Felix can make out Sylvain’s bruised cheekbone, the conductive copper of his eyes. He’s calculating an angle. Felix sits there without a single twitch of emotion. If Sylvain is playing wolf, then Felix, as much as he hates it, has to play sheep. 

“It sounds pretty serious,” Sylvain says. “Shouldn’t you be out there fighting too?”

The soldier doesn’t respond. More restraint than Felix’d given him credit for, but Sylvain is undeterred. He asks the soldier if it’s his first day. I mean, he hits like it’s his first day. Like he’s never seen a second of combat. It’s disappointing, huh, to be stuck on the sidelines with all the other expendables. Does his general think he can’t cut it? 

Just relentless fucking heckling, until the soldier turns. His gaze darts back and forth between Sylvain and Felix. Sylvain smiles back nastily. Felix looks deliberately away.

“The Margrave will trade for you with or without your tongue, Gautier,” the soldier says lowly.

Sylvain goads: ”I get it. You prefer it back here. That’s it, right? You’re a coward?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Are you sure?” Sylvain says, like a predator smelling blood. “Because you look like you want a reason to go another round with me. C’mon. I’ll help you feel like a man.”

Sylvain has always loved theatre. He’s always known how to choreograph a dance. Like a storm blowing across the cage pen, the soldier grabs Sylvain by the throat, throwing him to the ground. Sylvain spits in the soldier’s face. From the side, Felix watches as the shape of the soldier’s body goes rigid with fury. He bears down on Sylvain in brutal retribution.

Sylvain takes a punch, then another. Then, between the second and third blow, he rears up and slams their foreheads together. 

The sound is sickeningly loud. The soldier staggers back, into Felix’s range of motion. 

In an instant, Felix is twisting his chains around the soldier’s neck from behind and dragging him to the ground.

The soldier’s legs kick out as he struggles, gasping, choking, clawing at Felix’s hands and face. The pure violence of it roars in Felix’s ears. He feels like his right arm is going to rip out of its socket. His shoulder’s on fire and his grip is slipping. He grinds his heels into the dirt for more leverage.

It hurts. It fucking _hurts_. The joint that connects his shoulder and arm has been replaced by the tender flesh of a decaying fruit. His strength leaks from him like water. He can’t let go. He can’t finish it either.

Then Sylvain is kneeling behind Felix, pulling on Felix’s chains with both hands. The soldier’s eyes bulge. His face turns dark purple.

The body weakens. Stills. Sylvain yanks once more, savagely hard, for good measure. 

Felix collapses back against Sylvain’s chest, all the energy burnt out of him. The pain makes his head swim. There are two Sylvains above him, moving around, but neither have maneuvered Felix out of their lap yet.

The collar around Felix’s neck unlocks. The shackles around his wrists drop heavily to the ground. Felix can only concentrate on getting his breathing under control and not blacking out. His shoulder wound feels putrid and wet. Could be more blood, or an exciting new kind of pus.

A percentage of the pain lifts. Enough for Felix to be able to think straight again. A dead young soldier is lying on top of him. The night sky is beautiful above, lit by flaming arrows. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” Sylvain says, voice gentle, nothing like before. His hands glow with magic. “Are you there?”

Felix centers himself on Sylvain’s bloody, swelling, freckled face. “Yeah,” he croaks.

Sylvain touches Felix’s cheek. It stings unexpectedly. Felix hadn’t noticed how deeply the soldier scratched him.

“We have fifteen minutes to get out of here, then my troops have orders to retreat.”

“Okay,” Felix says. “I want my sword back.”

-

They get Felix’s sword. The camp is in chaos, tents are burning, and Felix and Sylvain’s trip to the armory goes unnoticed.

Afterwards it gets trickier. The Lance of Ruin can’t help but draw attention: from unprepared soldiers just now exiting their barracks, or frantic ones running with pails of water, trying to put out the fires. 

Sylvain cuts a bloody and efficient path. Unarmored, barefoot, his face and lance shining in the darkness. Felix manages to keep up. The brewing fever, the uselessness of his right arm, it only means he has to swing harder, fight dirtier and meaner, be more economical in his movements. It’s not his first time using a sword left-handed. Glenn was a lefty, so when Felix was younger he’d trained that way too. Believing: this was the secret to strength. You had to teach your body to let go of anything preordained. He kept at it for over a month until Dimitri’s next visit to the Fraldarius estate, when he saw Felix practicing and said with immeasurable fondness, “What are you doing? Just do it your own way.”

 _Stop,_ Felix tells himself, the golden unsought memory, Dimitri’s vivid face. _Stop. Not now._

By the time they discover the picket line of horses, Gautier forces have retreated. The confusion of ambush is dying down. They don’t have long before the rest of the camp knows they’re missing. 

Sylvain selects two horses and then severs all the remaining ropes. His lance pulsates, luminous. The other horses spook and scatter. 

He hands Felix a set of reins. “Are you okay to ride?”

It’s a meaningless question. Felix has to, so he will. His vision blurs as he mounts. Stubbornness saves him from falling. Pain and nausea sweep him up like a lover. 

“—stay with me, baby. Look at me.” 

Felix looks up, struggling for air. _Fucking keep it together._ He finds Sylvain again.

“I’m ready,” he says, voice rusty. “Let’s go.”

Sylvain layers a crooked grin over the total mess of thoughts and feelings he’s radiating towards Felix right now. Felix catches only three: fear, worry, and the sort of bright yearning that could blind a person. It’s enough to make whatever’s living inside of Felix rip out of his chest trying to reach the thing inside of Sylvain. 

“Kiss for good luck?” Sylvain says. 

We don’t have time for this, Felix wants to say, but when Sylvain leans across both of their horses, Felix has already closed his eyes. Sylvain tastes like dirt and metal, but his mouth feels lush. 

He doesn’t remember the ride. How long it takes, who else they have to kill. Only the beacon of Sylvain’s red hair. 

-

The hot searing pain in his shoulder is gone when he awakens, but a soreness lingers. 

Felix sits up groggily. The fabric of the tent boasts House Gautier colors. The size of it indicates it belongs to a general. 

Sylvain sits across the tent, glancing up from a roll of parchment. His smile is genuinely relieved; it makes him look younger. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sending word to your old man,” Sylvain says. “Is there anything you want to add?”

“Tell him that I’m safe,” Felix says.

He looks down at himself, taking stock. He’s been bathed. His clothes have been replaced by what look to be Sylvain’s spares. Even his hair has been washed. Good, because it was beginning to smell rank.

Whoever healed his shoulder didn’t tend to his hands. The chains he used to strangle that soldier have scored blisters into his palms. Without the tunnel focus of survival, the tactile memory makes Felix itch. It’s leftover tension, or unease, or just an acknowledgment of the only physical proof left on him of the past three days.

He pushes it out of his mind. Listens to the calming scratch of Sylvain’s pen. 

The Dukedom army will be on the hunt, Sylvain says. Felix nods: he’ll travel home to regroup. Sylvain needs to break camp soon too. The Margrave wants his son, his weapon, back in Gautier territory to ward off another Sreng incursion. Resources are thin. They’re fighting on multiple fronts. 

Sylvain keeps writing, keeps conversing, like he knows it helps. The tent is warm with sunlight. Felix touches his lips, then drops his hand. 

“Sylvain. How were you captured too?”

Sylvain sets down his pen. He rises, stretching, and returns to sit at Felix’s bedside. Stalling, as if Felix can’t tell. 

“I found out where some of the mercenaries like to drink,” he finally says, “the ones who are deep in Cornelia’s pocket. And then I got a drink there too. Loudly.”

Of course.

“You’re so fucking—” Felix starts, getting frustrated, but doesn’t finish. Sylvain is himself. There’s nothing new to yell about.

“Aw, Felix, don’t be mad. I just wanted to get you out of there.”

“By getting yourself thrown in with me? What kind of logic is that?”

Sylvain shrugs. “It worked out.”

“That’s not good enough,” Felix says.

Sylvain looks at him seriously and says, “It is to me. Can you just accept that?”

Felix’s throat pulls tight. Can he? They’ve fed and watered this growing situation between them for years, waiting for the harvest. The truth is that Felix has never been incapable of love, but nowadays, after everything that’s happened, he understands love in only one way. Out of a rocky heart grows a dozen other forms of sediment, other feelings that are not love, but that are just as inflexible and impure. “I love you” becomes “I resent you for your weaknesses” becomes “I hate you for failing me.” “I love you” becomes “I will hold your life hostage” becomes “I will die for you.” Each mineral binds to the other, inextricable. There have already been enough people in Felix’s life who think the act of dying means something more than it does. 

But maybe there are other terms he can accept instead. 

“Make me another promise,” Felix says.

Here is another cipher that hasn’t been used in some time. Sylvain looks surprised. “Yeah?”

Felix thinks about what he can ask for, and settles on: “Neither of us dies.”

Sylvain doesn’t answer immediately. Felix figures he also must determine if this is something he can accept. If alongside his doting commitments to fatalism and self-hatred, there’s room to commit to this too.

But eventually the answer does come. Sylvain opens up his arms and draws Felix closer to himself. He folds their bodies together, kisses Felix’s clean hair.

Sylvain says, “Okay.” He says, “Neither of us dies.”


End file.
